Boss brought me, kicking and screaming literally in the weeks following up, on this official delegation thing to Nanning in Guangxi for the China-ASEAN Exposition. It's one of those things that we must do to assimilate into the local business community. Nanning. Guangxi. A weekend of greasy food and being on good behaviour. It didn't sound good.

To be fair, trip started on a pleasant enough start. Everyone was nice and friendly, and not as stuffy as I had imagined. My wails at dinner seemed to amuse them though.



Guess what the above is?

Dunno?

Well, neither did I. Looked like fish from afar. As I placed it in my mouth -- before biting down on it -- I thought I felt bone, like chicken, which was strange. So I took it out, placed it on my plate and looked up to see one of the older guys asking me in a very amused manner, "Do you know what that is?".

Of course, I replied that I don't know since it was too scaly to be chicken.

He said. SNAKE. And I freaked.

And then, he added that the soup, that we had all drank very happily because it was so yummy, was boiled with snake, the endangered pangolin and blah blah. What on earth??!?! I thought that was chicken soup. It finally dawned on us that the restaurat was done up in African style because it specializes in wild game.

The rest of dinner was a game of asking "what's this, what's that" before eating anything. That said, I still failed with rice. Thought it was a bowl of brown rice -- looked and tasted like it -- but found out that it was made with pangolin's blood after I had eaten all of it. I tuned out after that. No no, please do not tell me anymore. :|

Anyway, next day at the event, I saw real little fishes swimming around in an exhibit.



And felt like running away to a seaside holiday, thanks to all the inspiring booths all around.



And here's our Singapore booth. Which was oh so quiet. Versus Hong Kong's which had a similar concept but was much livelier.



And here's where the future Macau City/Street in Nanning is currently under construction.



This trip was bagful of mixed emotions for me. The familiarity made me a little nostalgic but that lasted only a day as the usual clueless ineffiency and pretense of a pretty facade while the rest of the population live along non-lit streets in bad conditions get to me again.

I am happy to be back in Macau.

Labels: china, macau, travel